Saturday, October 13, 2012

Kindle under fire from low-cost 'txtr beagle' e-reader


The txtr beagle is another additon to the e-reader market, opting for a lower-price instead of rechargeable battery, 3G or Wi-Fi. Photograph: Peter Burkhard

A German firm is to take on Amazon's hugely popular Kindle device with the launch of an e-reader – the txtr beagle – that will cost €9.90 (just under £8).

The beagle undercuts the cheapest Kindle e-reader by £59 and is £149 less expensive than the Kindle Fire HD, which is due to be released on 25 October. Sony's PRS-T2 e-reader is £119.

The beagle comes in a range of four colours (jade green, grapefruit, purple and turquoise) and will be affordable because it has none of the features rival e-readers possess, such as 3G or Wi-Fi, and no rechargeable battery. Instead, users must replace its two AAA batteries when they run out (after about 12-15 books) and upload books via Bluetooth from the txtr app they must install on their smartphone (both Android and iOS versions are available).

This compares to the Kindle e-readers, which allow users to download a book wherever they are via their "Whispersync" 3G connection, as well as browse the net via a Wi-Fi connection.

The beagle's maker is currently in talks with mobile operators about potential partnerships, and it is possible that if it does become available in the UK it will be sold as an accessory alongside smartphones or bundled in as a "free" extra.

The beagle can only hold five books at any one time, compared with the Sony e-reader's 1,200 books, the cheapest Kindle's 1,400 books, or the Kindle Fire's 5,000+ books, meaning it may only be worthwhile as a cheap accessory to a mobile phone.

However, e-readers live or die by their content, so how does the beagle shape up compared to the other stores? The txtr app has 400,000 books compared with the Kindle Store's 900,000. But a brief search revealed broadly similar tomes, albeit with txtr coming out marginally more expensive. Txtr new releases are displayed more prominently than bestsellers on the app, and seem to contain only Mills & Boon books.
Txtr sells mainstream novels at similar prices to Kindle – Stephen King's 11.22.63 is £4.99 at both stores; Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity is £4.99 at both – but is more expensive on literary or less popular books. Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies, for example, is £7.99 at txtr compared with £5.12 at the Kindle store, while Julian Barnes's The Pedant in the Kitchen is £8.99 on txtr compared with £6.47 at the Kindle store.

By comparison, Sony's Reader Store didn't list The Brooklyn Follies or The Pedant in the Kitchen, while 11.22.63 and The Bourne Identity were both £4.99. At the Apple iBooks store The Brooklyn Follies was £6.49, The Pedant in the Kitchen was £8.99, while 11.22.63 and The Bourne Identity were both £4.99.

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